Field of the Invention
The invention relates in general to an equalizing mechanism, and more particularly to an equalizer apparatus and a Viberbi algorithm based decision method.
Description of the Related Art
In general, the architecture of an equalizer at a receiver in a conventional communication system is based on a hard decision mechanism. The hard decision mechanism determines a received signal is which symbol according to a decision border and outputs a corresponding signal level. However, the hard decision mechanism suffers from certain severe issues. For example, once a decision error occurs (e.g., due to an excessively large channel noise or multipath fading effect), the accumulated amount of misjudgment may affect subsequent decisions, hence exposing the overall system to higher collapsing risks and instability.